Run Over

The Apes Get Into Paradise
Chapter 5 Part 3
"I"ll inform your parents," Bizon said. When I gave him the phone number of the hospital where my dad lay, a car door closed behind me.

After this, the teachers, holding fire extinguishers, rushed back into the cla.s.s. Some of them threw up, and immediately became useless. And those who were able to move, pacified the resisting students and dragged them to a different room. Simply speaking, what the adults were doing was just beating teenagers until they lost their consciousness. And when they would begin to come round with great difficulty, unable to put two words together, they weren"t allowed to sit calmly, as their guardians were called and they were sent home.

They weren"t able to get to my mother, so I was led to the car of the cla.s.s leader. We"ll probably call the police later, was the only thing Bizon said in the sedan, in which he drove to work.

No one knew how many people from our cla.s.s weren"t affected. However, so many ambulances and patrol cars appeared at the school that the fingers on both hands wouldn"t be enough to count them. Flashing beacons illuminated the schoolyard in red, an amazing scene.

Laughing from time to time, I opened the door of my own house, and despite the early hour, fell into my bed and quickly fell asleep. It was enough to turn off the lights, in the room that sunlight didn"t reach, and darkness would fall upon it straight away.

I fell into a deep sleep.

Dreams visited me one after the other. Every time I woke up, I wanted to see the continuation and fell back asleep. I forgot the contents of the dreams, but they seemed important enough to finish watching them no matter what. When I got enough sleep, the short arrow on the clock pointed at one.

I didn"t know whether this was one in the day or one at night. So I ran a finger along my phone screen, laying at the head of the bed, and narrowed my eyes from the abrupt light. It showed eight past two, telling me that I almost slept for a whole day. While I was sleeping, I missed a bunch of missed calls from Shibata. My throat was terribly dry and when I tried to say something out loud, my voice sounded disgustingly hoa.r.s.e. Somehow opening up my basically stuck together eyelids, I rubbed my eyes. I stood up and walked over to the fridge to pour me water. It was as if there was some vacuum in my stomach and I was feeling nauseous. I gnawed on a few toasts, took a shower and finally felt like a normal person.

When I sat in the living room because there was nothing to do, my phone vibrated:

Shibata was calling.

"h.e.l.lo."

"Ah."

His voice was trembling for some reason

"I haven"t done anything. Our stupid comrades murdered each other themselves."

"Did you clear and drown that phone in the toilet?"

"Then everything is fine."

Silence.

I was waiting for the end buzzer, but Shibata wasn"t hanging up. He spoke up again.

Shibata spoke restlessly, not understanding what his actions led to. And I began to tell him everything that happened. How the photos sent by Shibata affected the cla.s.s. How big the explosion was that happened because of them. Letters, images, scissors, claps. Blood. Death.

For some time, Shibata kept listening, and then burst out laughing for a long time.

With all my heart, I felt that I crossed a certain line.

With a barely audible whisper, my cla.s.smate repeated what the phrase he once said.

This concluded our conversation. Shibata called me broken, but at the same time called me out for dinner, so he wasn"t afraid of me. Very surprising.

I ordered pizza to my house, and connected a game console to my tv. Without stopping, I ate the pizza and played. Three days late, a policeman appeared accompanied by my teacher and asked me to talk to him, but only grimaced from my story.

Somehow photos were sent by mail, on which Tanabe was having s.e.x, Tanabe went crazy, people clapped, she killed herself, then Fushimi went crazy, people tried to stop him, everyone lost their minds and began to die one after the other.

From such a story, the young, about twenty years old, police officer was obviously disgusted.

I repeated the same thing over and over again, and he just couldn"t digest what he heard.

I was asked whether I knew anything about what had preceded the incident, but I answered, nothing. When the interrogation was finished, I wanted to talk with Minato and called her a bunch of times, but she didn"t answer.

***

About two weeks pa.s.sed, and Shibata called me for lunch. Although nothing luxurious was meant by this, we went to a private booth in a conveyer restaurant. We could have also taken alcohol, but weren"t in the mood, so we just got some snacks and slowly gnawed on them.

Two weeks pa.s.sed, yet there were still no suspects, so Shibata, whose voice sounded very nervous last time, quite unlike him, now regained his composure, and his gaze returned to its normal cynical one. In addition, Shibata talked about the incident as a complete stranger and was only worrying about whether it was also his responsibility, even though he didn"t take part in the action himself.

"There will be no second semester for us. The school will close down."

"Right. By the way… how many people died?"

"No clue."

"The news didn"t say?"

"Well, the newsmen didn"t want to announce much. They barely said anything, they kept silent about the number of victims. Haven"t you seen it on tv yourself?"

"Nope. I was stuck at home, didn"t watch tv, and didn"t go onto the net."

"Wow. You"re just like some caveman. So what have you been doing?"

"Playing."

"Not a caveman. And what did you eat?"

"Pizza delivered to my house."

"Three times a day?"

"I didn"t eat breakfast in the morning, so twice a day."

"You"re some marginal then."

"It was stupid of them to not let us leave our homes, but my parents didn"t return anyways."

"I didn"t know that it was possible to live only on pizza."

Chuckling, Shibara sipped his oolong tea. A pile of ice cubes were poured into the gla.s.s and they were melting in the blink of an eye. Wetting his throat, Shibata said again:

"We will probably be transferred to a different cla.s.s."

"Of course."

"That"s strained."

"What"s there to do, you can"t just put together people that killed each other."

"Well yeah. And in general, I think, the school will also have to be changed. Who would want to learn with the same person who was with him in that ill-fated cla.s.s?"

"Mhm. It"s interesting, where would we go, if it gets to that."

"I don"t know. But if I was the princ.i.p.al, I"d definitely shove everyone as far as possible."

We both laughed. Our present disintegrated, like an air castle, and we seemed to be soaring in the air, losing our support beneath our legs. Any adult looking at us now, would probably think that we overplayed video games and would have hit us on the ears. Feeling a light hunger, we stood up from the table and left the restaurant.

"I wonder if Hara will still be bullied until the transfer?" I whispered suddenly, looking at the gloomy sky, lighted by streetlights.

"Hara, will probably get out of the hospital first."

"What? He wasn"t badly hurt, was he?"

"Huh, you haven"t heard?" Shibata said surprised. "Hara"s not himself right now. Though before he was all easy-going and calm, there are rumours that he went "crazy"." His tone sounded, as if he was talking about rainy whether. "He will have to receive medical treatment."

Shibata became silent.

"Where is he doing to undergo treatment?"

"You"re right, and where?"

"You don"t know?"

With silent giggles, we shook our heads.

We imagined adults gathering around Hara and saying, "You get better." What is Hara"s disease, no one understands. No one understands what they"re supposed to "make better". People around will just tell him again and again to get better. But it seemed to me that he wouldn"t get better until the whole cla.s.s would surround him and ask for forgiveness for everything.

Be that as it may, this news didn"t bring me happiness.
Edited by: Akshaythedon